Steven Gerrard

[Shaggy]

He ****in loved a tackle in that corner at the Kop end

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ij5SZ8I0Hnc"]Steven Gerrard tackles Thomas Vermaelen - YouTube[/ame]


[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swlC81yL_AY"]Gerrard smashes Phil Neville - YouTube[/ame]

[Shaggy]

http://www.rafabenitez.com/web/in/whats-on/liverpools-red-heart-steven-gerrard/178/

If I could think of one word to describe Steven Gerrard it would be ‘passion’. He was my captain at Liverpool Football Club for six seasons and we worked closely together to develop a side that could win the Premier League and the Champions League. Without Steven we could not have achieved the incredible success that we enjoyed throughout those years.

The ‘Miracle of Istanbul’ was only possible because of him. Steven inspired the team that night, refusing to believe it was an impossible job at half time against AC Milan. He led the charge with a wonderful headed goal and showed the determination needed to win a penalty for our third goal. And when called upon to sacrifice his position on the pitch for the team he didn’t hesitate. It was the perfect stage for him to showcase his talents, and Steven and the other Liverpool players were rewarded with the European Cup. He nearly always thrived on the big occasion, producing one of the great FA Cup goals as we beat West Ham at the Millenium Stadium in Cardiff. And the partnership he developed with Fernando Torres produced some of the most exciting attacking football the Premier League has ever seen.

After hearing the news today that Steven will leave Liverpool at the end of the season I wanted to wish him all the best for the future and thank him for his all his hard work during the time I was at Anfield.

Liverpool FC is not just losing a great athlete, or a great footballer. The club is losing its ‘red’ heartbeat. Steve, remember, you’ll never walk alone.

[Muddled]

Three more goals in the Premier League and he overtakes Michael Owen and gets closer to Fowler as our all time leading Premier League goalscorer.

[RichC]

How young does he look then

What a player he's been for us, I wonder if making this decision public will help him raise his game for the last half a season with us, its possible this has been weighing on his mind and had an effect on his performances

[Norbs]

He's been an excellent servant to the club and this is an excellent time for him to move on. For those saying he'll be sorely missed, I'm sad to say but he's already gone as an influence and we will move forward without him

[Shaggy]

http://instagram.com/p/xXQe0sHHhG/

[Keyser Soze]

How young does he look then

What a player he's been for us, I wonder if making this decision public will help him raise his game for the last half a season with us, its possible this has been weighing on his mind and had an effect on his performances

He's a grumpy look sod though isn't he, you know the old saying "If the wind changes your face will stick" i think it did with Gerrard

[Roboklopp]

Those pics with Rafa are intense- where does time to? I need get my arse in gear & sort out my life, the time since 05 has gone so very fast.

[Norbs]

http://instagram.com/p/xXQe0sHHhG/

It's 'there are' you thick cunt

[Shaggy]

http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2015/jan/02/steven-gerrard-liverpool-barney-ronay?CMP=share_btn_tw

Steven Gerrard: an icon in Liverpool decline and a captivating figure

The captain’s departure after 16 years will sever another thread connecting the club’s current team with its glorious past

• Gérard Houllier: he is the standout player from my whole career
• Steven Gerrard: leaving has been the toughest decision of my life



Farewell then, Steven Gerrard. It has been emotional – not to mention glorious, thrilling and, by the end of a 16-year Liverpool career of operatic highs and lows, a little blurred, a little rancorous and above all strangely hard to classify. The temptation, it seems, is to reach for the big soaring notes here – and with good reason. Nostalgia is an easy chord to twang away at but, with Gerrard set to leave at the end of the season, it does seem a bit as if a golden thread connecting Liverpool to their glorious past is about to be decisively severed.

There is a kind of parlour game one can play here. When Gerrard made his debut Steve McManaman was still playing. McManaman made his debut in a team containing Ian Rush. Rush made his debut alongside Phil Neal. Neal played with Ian Callaghan, who replaced Billy Liddell, who made his own debut alongside Bob Paisley, arguably the single greatest figure in Liverpool’s history and a central supporting joist of the glory years to come.

Gerrard’s departure leaves Liverpool short of one slightly ponderous 34-year-old central midfielder. But it also plucks out the final on-field stitch connecting the club to this wonderfully lush brocade, a past that, with Gerrard gone, will become just a little more remote. Small wonder, then, that the temptation has been towards hyperbole, including a slightly meaningless suggestion that Gerrard ought to be remembered as Liverpool’s greatest ever player.

If this is impossible to prove, or even to argue either way, there are some points worth making before it is even attempted. Firstly Gerrard is surely the only Liverpool player to be so much better than the mean level of quality in the team. The gulf has surely never been so large as it was on occasion between his own stellar moments of inspiration and the base note of grudging place-fillers in some of his more unsurprising teams, a would-be giant slumming it among the Josemis.

Similarly his best moment, a major part in Liverpool’s run to the 2005 Champions League victory, is surely among the single greatest sustained feats of individual influence in modern English football. And yet at the same time here is a player who, in his most fretful periods, would have struggled to get on the subs’ bench in Liverpool’s best teams of the last half-century.

Those great teams may have been more notable for their collective spirit, the primacy of teamwork and method above individual glory. But there are still some giants here. Is Gerrard demonstrably a better player than Kevin Keegan, who over six years was the headline player in three league titles, two Uefa Cups and the 1977 European Cup triumph? Has there ever been a better British central midfielder than Graeme Souness, who played 359 matches, scored 55 goals and drove his team on to five league titles and three European Cups. Souness also scored spectacular goals. He was also inspirational. His levels rarely dipped.

Kenny Dalglish was the best player in Britain for several years: has Gerrard ever been this? Ian Callaghan played 857 times and was at Anfield through the dawning of the age of Bill Shankly, from Second Division to European Champions. Roger Hunt, lest we forget, scored 286 goals for Liverpool and won the World Cup with England.

The point is that not only are comparisons impossible between different eras and different functions within very different teams but Gerrard is also only ever going to find himself suffering a crick in the neck gazing up at the Olympian pedigree of those who had the good fortune to play in the glory years.

Beyond this there is also no single, fixed notion of Gerrard himself. This is a player who emerged as a coltish, buzz-cut local lad and who subsequently filled the roles of hugely promising tyro, midfield wild thing, world-class right-sided player, playmaker, midfield shield, club legend and all round heritage piece.

Through all of which Gerrard’s basic longevity has arguably done him few favours. Not only have we seen an entire career played out in the same shirt, with all its associated dips and frustrations, but his time has been unavoidably tied to a period of decisive decline. When Gerrard made his debut, eight years after Liverpool’s last league title, there was still a whisper of empire around the place. When he finally goes those eight years will have stretched to a quarter of a century, with Gerrard the lone constant, a player whose gifts, connection to the club and moments of high-grade inspiration have been the consolation prize and enough still to twang that familiar golden chord.

There is a case that being Liverpool’s most prized player has also not been good for him, just as having to provide so often some kind of frenzied, cathartic moment of inspiration has not been helpful. The most striking part of Gerrard’s goal in Istanbul 10 years ago is the sight of him waving his arms about immediately afterwards, lost entirely in the struggle, barely able to control his zeal. This was exactly the right moment to be like that; other times perhaps not so much. But this has so often seemed to be what was required.

With this in mind there is a temptation to conclude Gerrard’s basic approach to how the game is to be played has been shaped by this sense of propping up the hopes of a club in a state of tantalising, occasionally defibrillated decline. His peculiarly frantic on-field presence has often been noted. Here is a footballer who has refused to budge from his hometown club but whose stasis has been accompanied by a ferocious sense of trapped energy on the pitch, who plays with all the calm assurance of a man attempting to repair a house that is constantly falling down around his ears. Players are often said to have a picture in their head on the pitch, but Gerrard seems to play with a series of pictures: flashbacks, snapshots, glimpses of some glorious alternative reality that, if he can just pass quickly enough, run a little further snap into a few more tackles, he might just finally catch up with.

There is nothing much to be gained from describing him as the best Premier League player of his time. Among midfielders Roy Keane, Patrick Vieira, Frank Lampard, Paul Scholes, David Beckham, Ryan Giggs, Cristiano Ronaldo and one or two others all have a competing claim on a share of that prize. But Gerrard is still perhaps the most captivating on-field presence of his era, a player who more than any other seems to embrace the essence of a time and a place and a club. So much so it is just as useful to speculate on what he might have become in a parallel world where Liverpool had a team to match his talents, not to mention one good enough to punish his inconsistencies by demanding more.

It is equally so to imagine what might have happened had Gerrard spread his wings and moved on as he might have in 2005. Those who remember that wonderfully controlled performance as a deep-lying ball winner, playmaker and goalscorer for England in the 5-1 defeat of Germany in Munich in 2001 can speculate as to what Gerrard might have become had the urgency, the fear, the pressure to resuscitate and preserve been removed from his game. All that really seems certain now is that he was a player of great, sustained moments of influence and one who will also be greatly missed for all sorts of reasons.

[marcus50bucks]

Top bloke is Hartson met him at the Froch v Grove fight at wembley. Am I right in saying he is a Liverpool fan too?

[Roboklopp]

Rafa still talking about "us." Love it.

[Shaggy]

David Stevenson @Dave1Stevenson
Even for a United fan its sad to see Gerrard retire... a little piece from when I was good!!

[Roboklopp]

Shaggy, stop trying to make me beef like a giant poncer.

[Shaggy]

LOL